Whether I'm coding, writing, playing games, or pissing people off, it all boils down to pushing buttons.

April 20, 2009

Vote The Adventure: Main Page

This has been a long time coming, but I'm finally starting this back up. Some of you are already familiar with this from the interactive story I ran on my first website back in 2003 and 2004. It was probably the most popular thing I had on the site, and it was great fun to write, so I've decided to resurrect the Vote The Adventure! (And there was much rejoicing.)

I'm sure everyone reading this is familiar with the "choose your own adventure" style books, where you would read a few pages and then be presented with a decision. Based on your decision, you would turn to a certain page in the book to continue along with the story. Repeat until your character died (I swear, ninety percent of the choices in the books would kill you), or you managed to find one of the very few endings where you lived.

Vote The Adventure is kind of like that, except with a drastically reduced chance (basically zero) of death, since the story hasn't been written yet. I will start the story off, and then when I think I've reached an interesting decision point, I will offer up options for you readers to vote on. The poll will remain active for several days to allow for everyone to discuss, vote, and maybe even get some of their friends in on the action if the poll is not leaning in the direction they'd like. The more people involved, the better! Once the poll is closed, I will continue the story in the direction that the majority of the readers feel will be the most interesting. In the case of a tie, my vote will be the deciding factor.

The last time I did this, I wrote the story in second person, where "you did this" and "you did that," but I think that is too limiting. I'm going to do things a bit differently this time. The story will be told from a standard third person omniscient perspective, but the choices will now relate to several characters, rather than just the protagonist. This way, you'll be able to influence multiple angles of the story instead of feeling like you're just driving this one character down a certain path.

In addition, everyone will be voting on aspects of the main character before the story even starts. That way, hopefully you'll feel like you have at least a little something invested from the very beginning, provided at least one of the characteristics you choose is selected by the majority. If by some chance the protagonist turns out to be completely unlike how you would like them to be, you'll still be able to influence their decisions and growth during the story. Keep in mind that the characteristics you will be voting on are what the character will be like at the beginning; stories are all about growth, learning, and experience, so it's completely possible that later on in the story the character will be nothing like how they started out.

I've been on a fantasy kick recently. I'm currently reading George R. R. Martin's "A Game of Thrones," and I've always thought that fantasy would be a fun genre to write in. I think it gives the author the most freedom, as it's only as grounded in reality as you want it to be. That being said, this Vote The Adventure will be a high fantasy story (think elves, knights, wizards, dragons, etc). So just keep that in mind when you vote on the characteristics of the protagonist.

I hope that you will enjoy reading and participating in Vote The Adventure as much as I enjoy writing it. I had a lot of fun doing this last time, and I hope this time it will be just as enjoyable. If I've piqued your interest even just a little, I hope that you will join me in this little interactive experiment. I will endeavor to be worth your time.

Note: If you're reading this on Facebook, you should know that all of these posts originate from my blog at http://ipushbuttons.blogspot.com. You're more than welcome to read everything on Facebook, but you should know that Facebook doesn't allow Javascript, and so all of the polls will link you to the PollDaddy site. If you're fine with this, great. But if you read the story chapters on my blog, the polls will appear on the same page; you won't need to go directly to the PollDaddy site. Also, there is a lag time of up to several hours between when I post on Blogger and when it shows up on Facebook. Just an FYI so you know what's going on.